Sessions

Expanding Our Reach: Finding Talent with LinkedIn Recruiter

Presenters: Erica Fini-Marten and Sebastian Kelnhofer-Maldonado
Track: Talent Management  |  Participation Level: Active Listening

In today’s competitive talent market, posting a job is just the beginning. This session shows campus HR professionals how to use UW-Madison’s LinkedIn Recruiter license to proactively identify, engage, and build relationships with qualified candidates, including those who may not be actively seeking new opportunities. Participants will learn how Recruiter supports strategic sourcing, building talent pipelines, and strengthening applicant pools while advancing the university’s mission of attracting exceptional talent. Through examples and best practices, attendees will leave with clear, actionable steps to enhance their recruiting efforts and expand their candidate reach.

Learning Outcomes

• How to obtain free LinkedIn Recruiter access.
• Where to access LinkedIn Recruiter resources.
• Find and engage passive candidates using LinkedIn Recruiter.
• Conduct searches for specialized and hard-to-fill positions.
• Create effective outreach messages that encourage candidate engagement.
• Build talent pipelines for future hiring needs.

Navigating Difficult Conversations

Presenter: Nandi, LPC/RYT
Track: Inclusive Excellence  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

Navigating difficult conversations is inevitable—but doesn’t have to be disastrous. This session explores how power dynamics, feedback, and communication skills shape the way we handle conflict at work and in life. Attendees will learn how to move from avoidance to authentic dialogue in both public and private contexts.

Part 1: The Empowered Bystander

Gain practical tools to safely and effectively intervene in public disputes or harassment involving people you don’t know well. We will examine the role of power & privilege in bystander situations and practice methodologies that prioritize safety, de-escalation, and allyship.

Part 2: The Feedback Loop

Move beyond awkward criticism and conflict avoidance and learn a respectful, actionable model for delivering feedback across different power dynamics—whether to peers, direct reports, leadership, or even personal relationships. We will also focus on receiving feedback with openness, separating emotion from insight, and using it as a tool for growth and trust-building.

The goal is to leave this session with stronger communication skills, a deeper awareness of how power shows up in difficult conversations, and the confidence to give—and receive—feedback that strengthens relationships and fosters continuous improvement.

Compensation Analytics: Managing expectations, decisions, and outcomes

Presenters: Brock Flowers, Michelle McCrumb, and Mario Babicic
Track: Total Rewards  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

This session provides HR professionals with a practical approach to managing employee compensation throughout the employee lifecycle, from establishing starting pay to supporting salary progression and adjustments. The Compensation Center of Excellence will explore how compensable factors, internal comparisons, external market information, and data validation can be used to support informed and equitable compensation decisions. Attendees will learn how to identify and evaluate relevant internal data in Workday, apply common compensation measures such as compa-ratio and position in range (PIR), and use UW-Madison tools and resources, including the Salary Administration Guidelines and Compensation Workbook, to strengthen salary administration and decision-making.

Learning Outcomes

• Compensation fundamentals for the HR Professional
• Compensation Strategy and Philosophy
• Building a Salary Structure
• Salary Administration
• Compensation decisions supported with data validation

Making Sense of Misconduct Reference Checks

Presenter: Rachel Simonson and Maddie Blanchard
Track: Talent Management  |  Participation Level: Active Listening

Misconduct Reference Checks (MRCs) are an important part of the recruitment process and supports informed hiring decisions. This session will provide an overview of the MRC policy and procedures, including when MRCs are required, how the process works, the use of SkillSurvey and Workday, and best practices for responding to requests. Whether you’re new to MRCs or looking for a refresher, this session will offer examples, tools, and guidance to help you understand requirements and navigate the process with confidence.

Learning Outcomes

• Explain the key requirements of the Misconduct Reference Check (MRC) policy.
• Identify when a MRC is required, and apply best practices for responding to MRC requests in a consistent and timely manner.
• Demonstrate how to use SkillSurvey to conduct an MRC and record the MRC completion in Workday.

The HR Professional’s Career Check-In: Investing in Your Own Career

Presenter: Kelsey Harrington and April McHugh
Track: Career Management  |  Participation Level: Collaborative Engagement

HR professionals spend their careers helping others, but how often do we pause to reflect on our own professional journeys? This interactive workshop invites participants to focus intentionally on their own career development. Participants will engage in experiential activities, partner conversations, and small-group discussions designed to spark self-discovery, strengthen career ownership, and encourage intentional planning for the future. Attendees will leave with practical insights, meaningful connections, and concrete actions to support their ongoing career growth.

Learning Outcomes

• Participants will gain insights into their own career development through experiential activities, self-reflection, and conversations.
• Leave with actionable steps they can take towards their own career development.

Building Manager Confidence in Performance Ratings

Presenters: Marci Birkes and Chris East
Track: Talent Management  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

HR plays a critical role in helping managers apply performance ratings fairly, consistently and equitably. UW-Madison Ratings Guidelines are intentionally designed to apply across a wide variety of employee groups, job functions, and work environments. While these guidelines establish a common foundation, managers often need additional support translating the behavioral indicators into clear, role-specific expectations for the employees they supervise.

This workshop, originally offered directly to managers at the Leadership & Management Conference, explores how to adapt our broad ratings guidelines to role-specific rubrics to support fair, consistent, and meaningful employee evaluations. We’ll share the process we facilitated with managers, and discuss calibration across multiple managers to align rating practices and consistency when evaluating employees performing similar work.

Learning Outcomes

• Help managers adapt broad performance rating guidelines into role-specific evaluation tools.
• Help managers identify observable performance expectations for their employee groups.
• Create rubrics that improve rating consistency and evaluation quality.
• Describe the purpose and value of calibration in promoting fairness, consistency, and equity across teams.

Alphabet Soup of Immigration

Presenters: Jennifer Taylor and Victoria Thompson
Track: General  |  Participation Level: Active Listening

This session will provide a basic overview of the most common immigration statuses seen at the University. We will discuss sponsorship, timelines and how their status affects the employment.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify Common Immigration Statuses: Participants will be able to distinguish between major immigration statuses, including U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and individuals with temporary work authorization.
• Understand Rights, Responsibilities, and Limitations: Participants will be able to describe the key rights, employment eligibility, travel considerations, and legal obligations associated with different immigration statuses.
• Recognize the Impact of Immigration Status on Employment: Participants will be able to explain how immigration status affects an individual’s ability to work, change employers, and travel internationally

Clear is Kind: Use Plain Language to Build Trust

Presenter: Beth Gaytan
Track: General  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

When people understand us the first time, they’re more likely to feel informed, respected, and confident about what to do next. Join us to explore how plain language can reduce barriers, strengthen relationships, and build trust, one clear message at a time.

Learning Outcomes

• Describe how plain language supports trust, accessibility, and positive customer experiences.
• Evaluate sample messages for clarity and identify opportunities to make messages clearer, more audience-centered, and more motivating.
• Use plain language strategies to create messages that build trust and promote confident follow-through.

Benefits Panel – Ask a Benefits Expert

Presenters: Madison Benefits Office
Track: Total Rewards  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

Subject matter experts from the Benefits Services Team in the Office of Human Resources will be on hand to answer your benefits questions related to:

• Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS)
• Income Continuation Insurance (ICI) and disability
• Unpaid Leaves of Absence
• General benefits

We will start with brief remarks, highlighting some of the most important details about these benefits and then open it up to your questions, dialogue, and best practices.

Learning Outcomes

• Dialogue related to benefits through an interactive Q&A asking subject matter experts
• Increased understanding of the State of Wisconsin benefits and limitations
• Best practice sharing

Not a Last Resort: Performance Management as a Developmental Tool

Presenter: Jay Winston
Track: Talent Management  |  Participation Level: Collaborative Engagement

Too often, performance management is treated as a compliance exercise or a paper trail we start building only when we’re already headed toward separation. That framing wastes the tool. Performance management, done well, is the everyday infrastructure of talent development: clear expectations, consistent feedback, real conversation, coaching, and shared accountability.

This highly interactive session makes the case for that shift and then puts participants to work building it. We will start with what has changed in the nature of work and what employees actually say they want from their managers. We will look at the research showing what happens when organizations get this right, including new public sector data linking performance management practices to service quality and public trust.

Participants will not sit and listen. In small groups, they will map the gap between the performance management their units say they do and what employees experience, practice real conversations through scenario-based role play (including the hard ones), and co-create a shared field guide of prompts, practices, and language that every attendee leaves with. Participants will leave with something they can use on Monday.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify gaps between performance management processes and the lived experience of employees
• Practice developmental performance conversations using a coaching framework and scenario-based role play with peer feedback.
• Using a situation in their on team, participants will develop a plan that they’ll commit to action on within 7 days.

Empathy and Accountability: Unanticipated Companions

Presenters: Tamie Klumpyan and Theresa Kim
Track: General  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

Empathy and accountability are often viewed as incompatible. In reality, partnering them can be a powerful way of creating trusting, effective work relationships and cultures. In this session, you will have an opportunity to explore what varying levels of combined empathy and accountability look like and practical steps that can be taken to improve the balance of both. You will leave with actionable insights to apply in your daily work and in your support of others.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the valuable relationship between empathy and accountability
• Examine the advantages of a high empathy, high accountability culture
• Identify strategies for cultivating a combination of greater empathy and accountability in daily work and interactions.

Roadmaps, Detours, and Destinations: Navigating a Workday Hiring Journey

Presenters: Caitlin Riechers and Jack Burlingame
Track: General  |  Participation Level: Active Listening

You are here. You and your team have done all the planning to prepare for a recruitment in your unit. Now it’s time to kick off the process in Workday, starting with a job requisition. In this Workday-focused session, we’ll break down the hiring journey into manageable steps, share navigation tips, troubleshoot common roadblocks, and help you more confidently reach your final destination: smooth business processes for a successful hire.

Learning Outcomes

• Apply Workday features more efficiently using time-saving tips, navigation shortcuts, and best practices to streamline common HR tasks.
• Enhance the employee and candidate experience by using troubleshooting techniques to support users more effectively.

Position Management Pilot

Presenters: Karen Massetti-Moran
Track: Talent Management  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

UW–Madison is designing a more strategic approach to position management to strengthen workforce planning, align positions with funding, and support more informed decision-making. This session will provide an overview of the Position Management Pilot, including the challenges being addressed, the collaborative work underway with pilot units, and the future-state vision for position governance, data, processes, and technology.

Participants will also have an opportunity to discuss the proposed framework, provide feedback, and learn about the next phase of the initiative.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the goals of the Position Management Pilot
• Describe the future-state vision for position management, planning, and funding alignment
• Identify opportunities to provide feedback and engage as the initiative moves toward implementation

The New Employee Journey: From Compliance to Connection

Presenters: Marci Birkes, Toni Lee Thellefsen, Olivia MacDonald, and LinkUW.
Moderator: Lynn Freeman
Track: Inclusive Excellence  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

Onboarding encompasses a broad range of topics including I-9s and other hire paperwork, orienting new employees to campus resources, benefits selection, and ensuring new employees feel welcome and have what they need to succeed. In this panel discussion, subject matter experts will share common challenges and practical guidance, as well as current and upcoming projects in their respective subject areas. Panelists include:

• Toni Lee Thellefsen – Workforce Relations, I-9s
• Marci Birkes – Learning & Talent Development, Culture & Belonging
• Olivia MacDonald – Welcome Center
• LinkUW – Hire business processes

Learning Outcomes

• Identify and share perspectives on common onboarding challenges and mistakes related to hiring processes, I-9s, employee welcome, and connection to campus resources.
• Apply practical tips and resources to help support a smoother onboarding experience for new employees.
• Describe current and upcoming onboarding initiatives and how they may affect HR professionals and new employees.
• Identify resources and subject matter experts who can provide support when onboarding questions arise.

The Over-Functioning Trap: Why the Most Helpful HRBPs Have the Least Strategic Influence

Presenter: Sabrina Wilson
Track: Career Management  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

The most capable Human Resources Business Partners (HRBP) are often the most stuck. They answer every request, solve every problem, and take work off their leaders’ plates and the more helpful they become, the more firmly the business files them under support. They’re in every meeting. They’re in none of the decisions.

This session names the pattern keeping them there: over-functioning. Three beliefs drive it — that more skills create strategic influence, that responsiveness builds partnership, that more solutions mean more value — and every one of them is quietly backwards. Through real leader-HRBP scenarios, participants will watch how solving too fast and absorbing leader-owned accountability positions HR as a service provider, and what it costs: influence, credibility, and a seat that’s in the room but not at the table.

They’ll leave with a different definition of HRBP value, measured not by the volume of HR activity delivered, but by the quality of decisions influenced and the accountability leaders keep and the specific behavior shifts that move a partner from answering requests to shaping decisions.

Learning Outcomes

• Name what’s actually keeping you stuck. Not a skills gap — the working patterns (over-responding, pre-solving, absorbing leader-owned work) that train the business to treat you as support.
• Retire the metric that’s mispricing you. Why activity volume, requests closed, programs delivered, problems solved, is the wrong measure of HRBP value, and what to measure instead.
• Make the shift from solving requests to shaping decisions. The concrete behavior changes that put you in the decision, keep accountability with the leader, and tie people decisions to business outcomes.

Pause, Assess, Respond: A Thoughtful Framework to Employment Relations

Presenters: Edith Blilie and Maddie Blanchard
Track: Talent Management  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

This session empowers HR professionals with a practical framework for navigating employment relation issues from initial concern through resolution. Participants will learn how to gather and assess facts, identify legal and policy considerations, engage key campus partners, evaluate risks, determine appropriate solutions, and document decisions effectively. Through real-world examples and a structured decision-making process, attendees will gain tools to address workplace challenges consistently, fairly, and in compliance with institutional policies and employment regulations.

Learning Outcomes

• Apply a structured framework to assess and resolve employment relations issues, including fact-finding, risk assessment, and decision-making.
• Evaluate workplace situations for legal, compliance, and operational risks while leveraging campus resources and subject matter experts.
• Develop consistent, well-documented employment actions that promote fairness, reduce organizational risk, and support positive employee relations.

The Self-Aware Organization: HR’s Role in Turning Insight into Action

Presenter: teri engelke
Track: General  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

Self-awareness is often viewed as an individual leadership competency, yet organizations themselves can demonstrate varying levels of self-awareness. This session explores how HR professionals can serve as catalysts for organizational reflection, helping leaders understand how culture, staffing, and behaviors influence strategy and goals. Participants will engage in discussion and explore activities and tools designed to spark meaningful organizational insights.

Learning Outcomes

• Define organizational self-awareness and its connection to employee engagement, retention, and culture.
• Utilize reflection and assessment tools and activities to identify organizational strengths and growth opportunities.
• Explore HR practices that encourage honest feedback, accountability, and organizational learning.

Beyond Workday: Using No-Code Applications to Automate HR Processes, Improve Data Visibility, and Reduce Administrative Burden

Presenters: Nathaniel Shay, Katie Stewart, and Kysa Samu
Track: General  |  Participation Level: Active Listening

Many HR processes don’t fit neatly into Workday. Tracking job changes, managing recruitment workflows, monitoring onboarding activities, maintaining a staff directory, and coordinating approvals often result in disconnected spreadsheets, email chains, clunky PDFs and email attachments, and manual tracking and follow-up. This session explores how HR teams can use no-code database and workflow platforms, to streamline processes, improve transparency, and reduce administrative burden without requiring extensive technical expertise or system development resources.

Through real-world examples, participants will learn how HR teams can identify automation opportunities, design sustainable workflows, and build user-friendly tools that complement Workday rather than compete with it. The presentation will cover project planning, stakeholder engagement, governance considerations, Knack example workflows, and lessons learned. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for evaluating their own processes and examples for how they can implement no-code solutions within their units.

Learning Outcomes

• Identify HR processes that are good candidates for no-code solutions outside of Workday.
• Design, build, test… use practical techniques to build workflow efficiency across HR processes (ex. mapping out the process).
• Develop a roadmap for introducing no-code process improvements within their own departments (by way of our examples in Knack), without needing an IT or coding background.

HR as a Change Partner: Practical Tools for Leading the People Side of Change

Presenter: Jennifer Erickson
Track: General  |  Participation Level: Interactive Participation

Change is a constant in higher education – from new technologies and processes to policy changes, reorganizations, and evolving ways of working. While the specifics of each change may differ, the human challenges are often the same: building understanding, engaging people, navigating uncertainty, and helping employees adopt and sustain new ways of working.

HR professionals are uniquely positioned to help organizations navigate these challenges, whether as change leaders, strategic partners, communicators, or advocates for the employee experience. To support this work, UW–Madison’s Office of Strategic Consulting has developed a practical Change Management Framework and Toolkit designed for the university environment.

In this interactive session, participants will explore the framework and practical tools for addressing the people side of change. Through examples and discussion, participants will consider how HR can help strengthen change efforts, engage employees, surface concerns and readiness, and support successful adoption. Participants will leave with practical resources they can apply to change initiatives within their own schools, colleges, and divisions.

Learning Outcomes

• Describe key people-related considerations that can influence how employees experience and respond to change.
• Identify how the SEAT Change Management Framework can be used to think through the people side of a change.
• Explore practical tools and approaches that can support employee engagement and adoption during change.